


Sleep Deprivation

by DeadpanPrincess



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Epilogue, F/M, Night Terrors, Nightmares, What Happens After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadpanPrincess/pseuds/DeadpanPrincess
Summary: The aftermath of war is never easy. Nightmares take time to fade, but the quiet moments can help heal phantom wounds.Thorne would have nightmares of his time on Luna, but so would Cress.
Relationships: Crescent Moon "Cress" Darnel/Carswell Thorne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	Sleep Deprivation

She bolts upright, screaming. 

“No! Please! Not again!”

Thorne wakes, but before his eyes open he rolls towards Cress. His hands reach out to cover where her fingers cup her stomach. 

“Cress, it’s me,” he whispers. The night’s blackness and her cries swallow his soft reassurances. Thorne tries raising one of his hands to her cheek. 

“C’mon, sweetheart. You’re here. You’re safe.” 

Her eyes open, but they don’t see him. Not really. Cress is all dilated pupils, eyes almost vibrating with how fast they flick back and forth. The dream still traps her. A captive to her stabbing, over and over again. 

“Cress,” he says.   


She releases the tension from around the imagined knife in her belly to intertwine her hand with Thorne’s resting on her cheek. A soft caress before her nails turn into talons. Cress tries to wrench his touch away. The harder he resists, the more her nails dig into her own skin. 

“Please. Honey,  _ please. _ ”

He’s shaking. Thorne can’t feel the tremor underneath the rising panic, but he can see it. His fingers tremble as he tries to bring Cress back to the present. She only responds to the nightmare. The Thorne that had stabbed her. The man who was no hero. The villain who was not enough to protect the woman he loves. 

Cress always wants magic and fairy tales. Thorne only delivers nightmares.

“Cress!”

“Don’t touch me!” She shoves him, hard enough that he falls back. He tries to curl around her. But Cress is awake now, and she flinches away from him. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, more hyperventilating than breathing. Carefully, slowly, Cress wraps her arms around her middle. 

“I’m fine. I am. I’m fine. I just need a minute,” she gasps.  


It’s too dark to make out her expression, but Thorne relies more on the sound of her voice. He hears fear. She’s afraid of him, of what he can do to her. 

He throws himself out of their bed. Two rushed steps have him crossing to the hotel window. Her heaving breaths suck the air out of the room, and he needs to escape, to jump from the window without Cinder to catch him, to forget the blood on his hands.  _ Her  _ blood. Too red and bright as it spilled over his fingers. The hands he could not control. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Cress says into the stifling silence. 

“You don’t really believe that.” 

Thorne can no longer count how many times she wakes up screaming. And while he also remembers stabbing her, it’s a vivid recollection of his hands as phantoms. He could feel them there, at the end of his arms, two violent ghosts only just acquainted with his body. They did not belong to him, because if his hands had been his own then he never would have hurt her.  _ Never.  _ Thorne doesn’t fear himself. Not against Cress. 

But she only relives how he had twisted the knife in her abdomen. His eyes might have been regretful, but his hands had been unstoppable. 

“I do,” she says. “Of course I do.” 

“We can’t pretend this isn’t happening,” he gestures to the rumpled bed, the panicked sweat likely clinging to her upper lip. 

“I just--I need more time.” 

“It’s been almost a year, Cress.” 

She raises her crossed arms from her stomach to her chest. Thorne doesn’t need light to know that she has a thin, stubborn set to her lips. He sighs, a reflex reaction. 

“So what would you do?” Cress challenges. 

Thorne drags his always unclean fingers through his hair. Wayward curls flip over his ear. He swears he can feel new wrinkles beside his eyes deepen. His mouth opens, but closes before words escape. Because the idea that has been percolating in the back of his mind  _ sucks.  _ It’s the inevitable conclusion to their relationship that he has tried to stave off for months. Aces, since the first moment he decided that they were really doing this. 

“Don’t you dare, Carswell.” 

Oh, so she can read minds now? 

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” he grouses.   


“You’re going to do the thing that all hotshot pilots do in the netdramas and break up with me for ‘my own good.’” 

“Even you have to admit that this isn’t healthy, Cress.” 

“You--” She storms over to him, a flurry of pink silk and pale gold bed sheets. “--Do not get to tell me what I have to do or what’s best for me. I know what I need.” 

Cress glares up at him. Her heroic spine snaps straight. She is five feet of pure fury, a miniature goddess under the window’s gentle moonlight. He wishes he could drop to his knees and worship her. She is so fearless where he is nothing but afraid. 

His head and shoulders hunch so that his forehead rests against hers. The fight melts out of her. She presses her weight into where they touch. 

“I don’t know what to do to make this better,” he admits. 

She doesn’t offer a quick solution or reassurance. Her eyes flick back and forth, reading him for...something. Thorne has no idea what she's looking for. 

Cress sighs, breath warm across his lips. It’s almost a distraction. Almost. 

Her hand smooths down the back of his neck. When he doesn’t jump, she rubs one of his curls between her thumb and forefinger. A rhythm builds. Thorne relaxes into her touch. A fraction of his tension unwinds. 

“This is enough,” she says. 

“But--”

“It’s enough, Carswell. It's just--We just need time. Give us time.” 

“How do you know if it’s been too long? If this never--”

“Only I get to say.”

Thorne can’t see her smile as he buries his face in the crook of her neck, but he knows her tone. It’s the one he doesn’t bother to question when she finishes hacking. Cress may not have as much life experience as he does, but there are things she just knows. No use in arguing. 

“I can’t keep hurting you,” he argues anyway. Because he gets a say too. 

Her jaw shifts against his cheek. A moment, maybe a realization that each time she screams, she stabs _him_. Her conviction seemingly wavers. 

“Would it be easier apart?” She asks. 

Thorne tries to imagine. No Cress in the morning, hair askew and shirt rucked up. No click-clack of the keyboard late into the night. No shoes thrown over her shoulder when they land in a country with grass so she can feel nature underfoot. An empty Rampion, with only Darla to command. 

“No,” he says. It would be a life too quiet, with too many questions about Cress that he could never answer. Not if she didn’t want him to find her. 

“No,” Thorne repeats. “I don’t think so.” 

“I don’t want to do this without you,” she decides. 

He sinks further into her arms, the weight braced against his shoulders finally releasing. Because even if it’s wrong, even if he should be less selfish, it’s not his choice to make. Cress decides for him. For both of them. A simple fact of gravity. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slightly aged-up version of Cress and Thorne that wouldn't leave me alone. In Winter, Marissa Meyer wrote that Thorne would dread the nightmares from stabbing Cress, but I always wondered how Cress would react. She loves Thorne, and she knows what happened wasn't his fault, but trauma is trauma. 
> 
> Anyways, I'm babbling. Here's Cress wearing the pants in their relationship. I love her and how she owns Carswell Thorne. They own my heart.


End file.
